Building LGBTQ API power to amplify our voices and increase visibility of our communities. Through organizing, we inspire and train leaders, establish intergenerational connections, and document and disseminate our histories.

We Are Magic Manifested, and We Won’t Be Erased

[Image Description: The words “Won’t Be Erased” are in white, on top of a photo of two people at a march.]

Yesterday, The New York Times reported an unreleased memo from the Trump administration, which would aim to define sex as, “a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth.” The memo, drafted by the Department of Health and Human Services, would diminish the role of gender identity under the Title IX anti-discrimination law, in favor of this limited definition of “sex.”

This legal change would deny the existence of transgender and gender non-binary people. No matter the work, the community, the surgery, the papers, the conversations—under this memo, people would only be seen as their sex assigned at birth, rather than their gender identity. Without Title IX protections transgender folks would no longer be able to dispute discrimination when it comes to healthcare, housing, employment, education or violent attack. Transgender people would be living under even more scrutiny and judgement, potentially even having samples of DNA tested in order to determine a person’s sex assigned at birth, violating people’s biological and personal rights.

At APIENC, we know what this is. This is an attempt to isolate, invisiblize, and erase the existence of transgender people in the United States. This as an attempt to dictate how our bodies should be, publicly and privately, for the sake of conservative federal comfort. This is an attempt to deny our histories of organizing, the rights of our people, and the humanity of our community.

And yet, fighting for safety and building community is in our bones. If they ever dare to test our DNA, they’ll find long legacies of trans resistance interwoven with histories of fierce organizing. Within our trans bodies are the experiences of the transgender, third-gender, non-binary people who have prepared ceremony, held ritual, and created culture for centuries—formuch longer than the federal government has been around.

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We won’t be erased. We won’t be forgotten. We are magic manifested, dreams become reality, and futures actualized. Stay rooted, get close, and take a breath. This is just the next beginning, and we will move through this, working for a world where our full selves can thrive.